8) Structure your text. Make use of bold headings, short paragraphs, bullet lists and tables if the information requires it. To better organize your thoughts, divide your article into sub-headings. Sub-headings make things easier to digest. Instead of tackling the entire article at once, try writing one paragraph at a time.
9) Use words in your content that people will search for. At 168, we provide a service that will help you with this aspect of your content development. Search engines consider headings, page titles, bold and linked text to be more important and relevant and the precise wording of these sections of your content are extremely important. Contact us for more details.
10) Create a lot of links and use relevant keyword phrases as the link text. Ask other sites with similar content to link to your site and most important, tell them the text to use in the link.
11) Make good use of white space and allow your content to breathe. Don't allow text to butt up against graphic elements on your site or photographs, etc. Don't place too much emphasis on your navigation elements if content is important to your site. Allow users to easily read your message in a clean, uncluttered and — in the case of blinking text — non-irritating environment.
12) Write your own content. Use only content (pictures, text, videos, ...) made by yourself or with explicit permission, everything else probably infringes someone's copyright.
13) Check and double-check your content. Use a spell-checker, and have someone check your texts for correct grammar. Some people are really turned off by those kinds of errors and it can cost you a potential sale or ongoing client. When in doubt hire a copywriter or even someone to proofread your own writing. You usually only have one chance to make that first impression and if you take your content seriously then a small investment in the services of a professional writer will be well worth your money.
14) Try to avoid placing banners at the top of your page. If you run a site that depends on advertising you might want to ignore this suggestion but for most sites, banners will instantly take your customers to another site other than your own and you will lose the sale. If you have to have banners or advertising on your site, limit the number of banners on your site to no more than two per page. One is ideal and try to make the advertising relevant to the content to add value.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Great guide - ty - one for constant reference.
2 - DrPat
Good recommendations, especially #13; correct grammar and spelling are essential to readability.
3 - mary
ty for your site. its a big help ill be changing my site soon and adding more content and getting rid of alot of links and crap lol. again ty..
4 - hadeel
Thanks a lot. It is really good job.
5 - Ramesh Kommana
After the content of the above page fully read. But I am not statisfied of it. describe more....
6 - vanibala rambothu
Good recommendations.
7 - Website Content
Nice post. Producing interesting, relevant content not only encourages the search engines to position a website highly in the search results but also helps gain visitor loyalty with people visiting time and time again.
8 - Cr8ivebug
I had written an post on my blog regarding "Why Content is King" and this post complements the post very well. In fact anyone who wants a more detailed write up on what I started definitely must read this. I will try to link this to this post for my readers.
Thanks Chris
Pratheesh
9 - Writezilla
#3 - Kepp content short
SEO rules nowadays require your content to be "the more, the better", e.g. your blog post would rank better if you make it longer. Am I right or am I right?
10 - Martin Mosch
Very well written list of tips.
11 - Russ Aubrey
You have covered it like a blanket. A treasure trove of good advice.
12 - Writing expert
Very well written, Christopher. I would add, Make It Visually Scannable. Being Digg/Reddit/the like surfers, we these days don't have time to read looooong pieces
13 - college dude
Infographics are on the verge of great web content writing these days. Illustrious images along with catchy writing will surely gain you thousands of pageviews in a matter of hours.
14 - John
I hate website that make you click from page to page in order to read an article.
15 - qontent
"SEO rules nowadays require your content to be "the more, the better", e.g. your blog post would rank better if you make it longer. Am I right or am I right?"
actualy it is not a matter of length. it is more for relevance between title and article's keyword. it has no mean at all if you write 50 feets long if your article has no matching word with title.
16 - Greg @ essay writing blog
Qontent, you're damn right. SEO is pretty hard these days.
John, â€"me tooooo! And, you know, distributing your article between multiple pages doesn't really make your blog more attractive to the big G.
17 - qontent
greg, yea...it's somehow like "lucky strike". someday it could index you in couple of hours. but then when we try to apply the right same method to another site it has different in result, it takes days.
18 - Lisa
You are right, forcing music, flash ads and unsolicited excessive animation is very annoying. For me, it's the most irritating part of the website and I tend to leave such aggressive pages. Breaking text into small paragraphs also helps to scan the text and get the main idea really fast.
19 - Monkeywebster
Writezilla "the more content the better" is only true if it is great content and most with more are not. Usually people tend to ramble when they use the motto "the more content the better" just saying
20 - grave situation
hey guys....do you think it is ever worth outsourcing your content? i am a writer myself but i am just one man and have a lot to write about. I am currently using a content farm called independdent publishing for some articles and they are coming back great, but do you think this is a good long term solution?
21 - Pensioner
Great information Christopher. I think it is more difficult that just saying "Use humor and make yourself likable"-- creating a likable, humorous and authorative writing styles escapes the majority of bloggers. I've got to admit: I pay more attention to information which has a real personality behind it.
One thing you can control though, is your audience. You've got to research your demographic and write for them, not for yourself. Answer all their possible questions, and go the extra mile to make your content more informative than your competitors-- people will notice, and see you as an authority in your field.
Remember, quality is a relative and comparative term; benchmarking your competitors, taking all the great points they make, combine them and add your own to create an post which says to the user: 'You don't need to go anywhere else for information in this field'.
22 - Michael Cordova
Thanks for the advice. I didnt originally write the content for my site, but Ive been investing more time in SEO efforts. Ill use this as a starting ground for making some tweaks.
23 - Igor
If you have serious intent, then:
1-no moving or wiggling distractions on the page
2- use white or pale pastel backgounds ONLY. Never use black.
3-always use black typeface.
4-use a 'large enough' font, preferably serif (which improves visual cues).
5-technical material should be monospace.
24 - goose
I rarely drop responses, but i did a few searching and wound up here How To Write Great Website Content - Blogcritics Culture.
And I do have 2 questions for you if it's allright. Is it only me or does it give the impression like a few of the responses come across like they are left by brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing on other social sites, I'd like to follow anything new you have to post. Would you list of all of all your communal pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
25 - vigopan
nice advice thanks